


Received in This Condition

by Ember_Keelty



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-21
Updated: 2012-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-10 10:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/pseuds/Ember_Keelty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's been damaged, but she still has the mail, she still has WV, and she's not going to lose anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Received in This Condition

**Author's Note:**

> Writing Wednesday prompt from Coz: "WV/PM - rebuilding Can Town in a non-doomed universe"
> 
> I couldn't really come up with a good explanation for how they managed to end up in one of those in the first place, so let's just take that part for granted because shh, only happy endings now!

            "RH?"

            The little Prospitian man gets up from his knees where he was working in the dirt and comes to see her.  PM resists the temptation to step onto his lawn under the guise of meeting him half-way.  The grass in it looks so inviting, soft and dark green and _(something is wrong)_ so unlike the coarse yellow-gray stuff that grows throughout most of Can Town, though even that seems like something miraculous after so long of never feeling anything beneath her feet but hot sand.  This world was apparently not hit quite as hard as Earth had been; there is still surface water to be found in some places, and around it plant and animal life, which is a welcome change even if the latter is sometimes large and toothy and very, very hungry.

            "Well?" the Horticulturist asks excitedly.  "Did she have anything for me?"

            PM slips her satchel off her shoulder and _(something is wrong)_ fishes out a small drawstring pouch along with a letter, both of which she hands to him.  RH tears into the letter first, hastily breaking the seal and skimming his eyes over the words.  The pouch he opens second and more slowly, almost reverently.  A few off-white, irregularly oblong seeds slide into his hand when he shakes it out.  He ogles them as though they'd just descended from the sky lit by a column of pure golden sunlight and accompanied by a heavenly chorus.

            PM coughs.  RH jumps.  "Right, hold on just one moment!" he says, and darts off into his house.  It's an ugly little jury-rigged shack, she notes, that stands in sharp contrast to the beauty of his expansive, immaculately trimmed and precisely ordered garden full of deep green leaves and brightly colored vegetables.  The whole property clearly belongs to a man who knows exactly who he is and where his priorities lie.

            PM wants to be like that again.  She wants to be perfectly, unreservedly content as long she's doing her job.  There was a time it would have made her so happy to see a customer really _enjoying_ a delivery that she would never have dreamed of rushing him.  And it _does_ make her happy, it really does — just not happy enough to drown out the treacherous little part of her brain that is absolutely convinced that something horrible either happened to WV while she was away picking up packages from the scavenging outposts or is about to happen now.

            It's not a premonition.  She's had more than enough of them by this point to know that, at least in the rational part of her mind.  For a while after she found him again she was unable to bring herself even to let him out of her sight, afraid that he would be taken away from her just like everything else she had ever loved.  He went out of his way to stay close to her, too, and she strongly suspects that he felt the same fear, or something close to it.

            They both have their own lives to get on with, though.  Working her old job again has been good for her, because as long as she's doing that, she can pull together the determination for just about anything.  There's still something at the very core of her being that believes with an unshakable (and, frankly, at this point rather absurd) faith that delivering the mail is the single absolute Most Important Thing.  It's gotten her to the point where she can reliably make it through a normal work day without panicking even a little.

            After several days out of town, though, she still sometimes finds herself having to actively fight the urge to drop everything she's doing and go check on WV.

            RH comes back out with a pouch full of entirely too many coins.  "Just _my_ pay for now," she explains to him.  "A postal worker will pick up the money to take to the outpost the next time one of us heads out that way."

            "Oh, right, sorry!" RH says and, to her dismay, runs back into the house to sort out the difference there.

            She's made all of her deliveries save one now.  _(Something's wrong!)_ She could always return for the money later.  _(Go!  Run!)_   Still, it would look horribly unprofessional for her to fail to be patient enough to finish her job.  She has the reputation of the Can Town Postal Service to think about — so she thinks about it _very hard_.

            At last, RH emerges and slips her pay to her in a handshake.  "Thank you so much!" he says, looking up into her face.  "I really—"  He breaks off, and by the way he's suddenly staring at her, she realizes before he even starts talking again that, oh dear, he was _there_.  "Wait a minute.  Aren't you—?"

            "I'm the Post Manager," she says flatly.  The Prospit of which she was for a time the rightful Monarch was dead, a ghost crying out for justice.  Once she'd laid it to rest, she and WV destroyed both rings.  She had no desire at all for the people of the new Prospit and Derse to accept her as a ruler just because she had the power to make them.

            "Of course," says RH, sounding much more subdued than he did at any point before.  He lets go of her hand and backs away slowly.

            PM turns away from him and sets out for Town Hall.

            "Package for Mr. Mayor!" she calls out as she knocks on the door of WV's office.  She knows he wouldn't mind her letting herself in, but it always makes her smile to hear him make a sudden rush for the door from the other side and watch him practically fling it open to greet her.  He does it this time, too, and then he's standing in the doorway looking up at her like she's the most welcome sight he's seen in ages, and suddenly she's so happy she can't even bring herself to feel ridiculous for how glad she is to find him alive and well.  "Reports from the scavenging outposts," she says, holding them out to him.

            He reaches out but doesn't take them from her, just rests his hand on hers, and it's so sweet she bends down and kisses him right there without even bothering to step into the office and close the door behind them.

            "Did you have a good trip?" he asks her — and then adds, completely earnestly, "I hope you did not have to fight off any monsters this time!"           

            "Not this time," she tells him, and feels just a bit bad for not coming to see him sooner, because _of course_ he was worried about her too, even if he knew perfectly well not to expect her back until late afternoon.  She _could_ have made his delivery first today, but she knows from experience that conceding anything to her anxiety just makes it stronger.  Besides, if she'd done that, she wouldn't have been able to stay afterward.

            _Something is wrong!_ the little voice in her head tries shouting at her one last time before giving up and withering away.  Everything that can still be all right _is_.


End file.
